Tuesday, May 29, 2012

The climate models have no clothes.
They have no predictive ability. The proof that they don’t is in the
observations of what has happened compared to model predictions. Warming is at
a standstill. So is sea level rise. Glaciers in Glacier Bay retreated ten times
more from 1780 to 1912 as 1912 to present. Warming still precedes CO2
increases. The “hot spot” ain’t there. Severe weather is not as severe as it
used to be. A review of cycles of glaciation and warming during the past
500,000 years show Earth is now in what is established as long periods of
glaciation and short inter-glacials.

Ocean pH was 0.8 units lower and
atmospheric CO2 was five times higher one hundred million years ago (when
marine invertebrates had already been established and successful for over four
hundred million years). Recent studies show that some marine invertebrates do
better in higher acidity, and that models using strong acids have led to
incorrect conclusions about increased ocean acidity. Since very little CO2
absorbed in water becomes carbonic acid, it has very little effect on pH anyway
Between 1751 and 1994 surface ocean pH is estimated to have decreased from
approximately 8.25 to 8.14 – since we have many studies that show the warming
ending the Little Ice Age began about three hundred years ago, the relationship
between current warming, CO2, and ocean acidification seems specious. Since CO2
is released to the atmosphere as oceans warm, there is a disconnect between
oceans warming and atmospheric CO2 being absorbed by the oceans. It would
appear more likely that oceans would have absorbed CO2 and created more
carbonic acid during the Little Ice Age than during the warming that followed.
Since atmospheric warming following the Little Ice Age would have preceded
ocean warming, a timeline of decreasing pH over three hundred years ago makes
more sense.

But back to models. If the models
were right, US temperature would have increased at least three times the 1
degree F since 1900 (with most of the increase in the 1930′s). Sea levels would be up more than 6 inches since 1999,
instead of less than one inch. Major hurricanes would be hitting the US
annually, instead of none in over 3 years. Texas temperatures would be up more
than the observed 0.04 degree F since 1884. Or to put it simply, the models
would not be so crappy at predicting the future, or in explaining the past.

A writer to our Gualala weekly newspaper noted (Oyster evidence, ICO, May 11, 2012) that
acidity of the oceans are increasing “at a rate in the last 100 years that is
10 times faster than any 100-year span in the last 300 million years.” This is
interesting on many levels, most conspicuously because it’s not true. An
obvious fault is that ocean pH changes cannot be measured in precise 100-year
increments covering the past 300 million years. However, there’s more.

A 2005 study (Pelejero et al.) spanning the period 1708-1988
found a clear interdecadal oscillation of pH between 7.9 and 8.2 pH units. The
study showed many oscillations of 0.2 pH units within the three 100-year
periods examined.

A 2009 study (Liu et al.) of the pH history of the South
China Sea covering the past 7,000 years shows oscillations of 0.4 pH units,
some of which decreased 0.2 pH units in a 100-year period.About recent increases in ocean acidity, this
study concluded: “(T)here is nothing unusual, unnatural or unprecedented about
the two most recent pH values. They are neither the lowest of the record, nor
is the decline rate that led to them the greatest of the record.”

It’s hard for a statement about acidity increasing “faster
than any 100-year span in the last 300 million years” to be true when the rate
isn’t the even the fastest in the last 300 years, as one study shows, or in the
last 7,000 years per another study.

A 2009 Australian study (Wei et al.) found a decrease in pH
of 0.4 units 1935-1940, and an earlier decrease of 0.3 units 1860-1865. Both of
these reductions, as all of the previous examples, were obviously not caused by
increased atmospheric CO2. It is also obvious that Oregon oysters survived them
all, and should persevere.

(The writer sent another letter to our weekly newspaper that basically repeated his first letter without the slightest indication that he had read my refutation above)

According to him, a Columbia University study found we had increased the ocean’s acidity,
in his words, “10 times faster than any time in the last 300 million years,”
but that’s not what it says. Its headline is “Ocean Acidification Rate May Be
Unprecedented,” and the report findings are qualified with the word “may”
throughout.

The pH change in
question is only a decrease from 8.2 to 8.1 in 200 years. To put this in
perspective, a 2011 study, Hofmann, et al., High-Frequency Dynamics of Ocean
pH: A Multi-Ecosystem Comparison, found many non-open ocean sites where pH
varied by up to 1.4 units in a month. In the more stable and vast open ocean,
Hofmann wrote: “Open-water areas (in the Southern Ocean) experience a strong
seasonal shift in seawater pH (~0.3–0.5 units) between austral summer and
winter.”

A Mediterranean
experiment found that corals and mollusks transplanted to lower pH sites were
“able to calcify and grow at even faster than normal rates when exposed to the
high [carbon-dioxide] levels projected for the next 300 years.” That’s not
surprising, since corals and shellfish evolved with CO2 levels 10-20 times
higher than present.

Contradicting the
Oregon State oyster study he cited, a 2012 Parker et al. study of
Sydney rock oysters found that "larvae spawned from adults exposed to
elevated CO2 were larger and developed faster" than those from nearby
ambient seawater. This study exposed the flaw in the Oregon study that only
considered the impacts on larvae, ignoring the carry-over effects passed from
adult to offspring.

The news of a week in April reminds me of a joke
about a racer who was "so far behind he thought he was leading."
Obama began by blurting out that a foul-Tweeting hood (Trayvon Martin) looked like his son. Such
hurried race-baiting is more worthy of a Jesse Jackson or an Al Sharpton;
certainly neither Bush nor Reagan would have made such a statement. However, if
Bill Clinton made a similar remark, DNA matching would be in order, but that's
another story.

Speaking of remarks, we now know Obama can speak
without a TelePrompTer, at least to Russians, and that his flexibility includes
bending over backwards.

Obama's budget lost 412-0 in the House, and since
there aren't 412 Republicans in the House (yet), that means every Democrat who voted,
voted against it. Obama would have slightly better luck in the
Democrat-dominated Senate, where no budget has been passed since 2009.

Finally, the Supreme Court wrecked the Obamacare
train, news and pictures to follow (in June) as they say on TV news.

John Diaz’s article “Truth and Denial” (Insight, page E3,
San Francisco Chronicle, February 26, 2012) was remarkable for its lack of
science in a supposedly scientific editorial. Diaz made a perfunctory
denunciation of the fraud (and probable forgery) perpetrated by “Scientist”
Peter Gleick on The Heartland Institute, a libertarian think tank based in
Chicago.

In his article Mr. Diaz lightly condemned Gleick while
trying and convicting The Heartland Institute and man-caused global warming
skeptics of crimes against humanity. According to Mr. Diaz: "The
scientific consensus that human activity is accelerating global warming is
solid; the only real debate is about the magnitude and timing of the
consequences. Its effects are already apparent. Melting glaciers and ice caps.
Sea-level rise. Severe storms and drought. Devastated crops."

The fact that global warming is not accelerating, and that
numerous reputable and respected scientists deny its consequences did not enter
into Mr. Diaz's labeling of skeptics as "deniers", furthering the
ongoing effort to establish and maintain an odious link with Holocaust deniers.
Mr. Diaz obviously is unaware that glaciers have been retreating for over 300
years since the end of the Little Ice Age. In Glacier Bay, Alaska, retreat was
over 50 miles from 1780 to 1912, and only six miles since. Sea level rise has
decelerated, according to Europe's new sophisticated satellite system, and is
trending at about six inches per century or less, the same as the two previous
centuries. The alarmist forecast for the San Francisco Bay Area of six feet by
2100 would equal the highest rate of increase per century experienced at the
end of the Ice Age about 10,000 years ago, when there was vast quantities of
ice to melt and global temperature was much higher than today. Concerning
severe storms and drought, and devastated crops, even dedicated
"warmist" scientists deny linkages, and respected neutral scientists
such as the Doctors Pielke, Senior and Junior, dismiss it entirely.

Mr. Diaz also assumes with no evidence that skeptics are
well funded, but if he had chosen to read the fraudulently acquired Heartland
Institute budget, and compared it to warmist organization budgets - Sierra
Club, Greenpeace, World Wildlife Federation, etc. - he would be confronted by
the facts that the Heartland Institute budget is only a small fraction of the
budgets of any one of these organizations, that only a small portion of
Heartland's budget was applied to climate change, and that Big Oil provides far
more money to warmists than to skeptics.

Mr. Diaz, I can easily substantiate skeptic science
positions by inquiring government, not skeptic, sources. Mr. Diaz, it seems you
and many other "reporters" have lost your nose for news when it comes
to natural climate change.